


Promises to Keep

by Syksy



Category: The Hunger (1983)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Secrets, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28115175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syksy/pseuds/Syksy
Summary: Glimpses of forever, through Miriam's eyes.
Relationships: John Blaylock/Miriam Blaylock
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Promises to Keep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caissa/gifts).



> Thank you to Elf for the beta!

Miriam had perhaps become a little unhinged after Lollia had... gone. She had wandered around the continent for a few years, never able to settle anywhere for long, never meeting anyone that she could find a connection with, anyone she _wanted_ to have one with. The loneliness gnawed at her, but she would not stop. It all felt so hollow now. She felt hollow. Why not just suffer, when that was what would happen in any case, eventually?

Rationally she knew that these feelings would fade, that she only needed someone, anyone, to salve her wounded heart. She simply refused to look. So it was her ears and not her eyes that found him. She heard John play and something woke in her that she had wished dead. Desire for him, for the promise of light and hope that she could hear in the notes of his cello.

Miriam kept her distance at first. She wanted to learn all she could about this man, had to be sure that it was truly love and not only desperation that made her want him. She found that he was from England, come to Italy to perfect his art, since it was the birthplace of his chosen instrument.

“At least that was the reason I gave my father. I just could not bear the damp any longer,” might have been the blithe answer he seemed to prefer to give to curious strangers, but to her it was clear how much his music meant to him. He did not seek attention; too much of it seemed to in fact make him awkward and shy. So it was not fame he wanted, but something less tangible. He burned so bright with the passion of it that she felt she might be charred if she got too close. And she found that she did not care. In fact she longed to feel that heat, blistering as it might be, after the long years of cold.

She lured him slowly. It was so very hard not to just rush in and have him, body and soul, but she was certain it would be better this way. He would grow to need her like he needed music, or air, and so when she offered him the blood he would have no thoughts of damnation or fear. It would be simple and beautiful. And so it was.

“You will never, ever die,” she promised, holding him tightly in her arms. “I will give you life eternal. You will never suffer and never grow old. We will be together, you and I, forever and ever.”

***

At first John was worried about humans. Worried that they’d find out, that they’d try to burn him or crucify him or a hundred other absurd and morbid possibilities. She had told him that they were very difficult to kill and not to concern himself with the affairs of mortals so much. It was not exactly a lie. But he worried about them in other ways too. Worried about taking a mother from her child, a brilliant musician from his work. These woes were harder for her to deal with. Not the finding of answers: by now she knew well enough what to say, what was likeliest to help. She’d had to learn it, with the others. Most of them had had these thoughts, had been tormented or exalted or simply saddened by the power that they held over the lives of all others.

It was one of the very rare times she felt like a fraud, talking to him of her own assumed pain. She mimed compassion, forced emotion into her voice. It was a wonderful performance, worthy of any stage. She told him that she understood, and she saw him believe her. And it hurt her, somewhere in a deep and unnamed place inside, because this lie did not have even the bones of a truth to cling to. The source of his anguish, this dilemma at the heart of his existence, she did not know at all.

It was actually sort of delightful, she later decided, the way he kept on caring. It added such a beautiful edge of pain to his brightness that kept him sharp, and exquisite, as a blade.

***

They had such fun with the clothes of this time. After the so-called “natural forms” that had been in fashion for a while, top hats and hoop skirts seemed both slightly ridiculous and entirely charming. Miriam could not by any means recall all the different styles she had worn over the long years, but she never lost her interest in new couture. Such changes marked the passage of time, and even though the future always carried with it the possibility of pain, there was an intense pleasure to the process as well. Sometimes she imagined she could physically feel the years gliding by, like silk against her skin.

It was also exceedingly pleasurable to make John remove all these constricting garments. She liked him to begin with himself and only start on her when the whole of his gorgeous body was laid bare for her to admire. He would kiss his way along her leg as he rolled down a stocking. He would loosen the lacing of her corset so excruciatingly slowly that she wanted to scream in frustration, but did not, because she knew how good waiting could feel. Or he’d cut all the intricate ties, slash the laces with a knife, caught in a reckless impatience of his own and not caring overly much if he happened to draw blood. She certainly never minded that.

As they lay there afterwards, half on the rug and half on top of the yards and yards of her skirt, she spoke without thinking. “I’ve never felt like this,” she said, and only when she saw the look on his face did she realize it had been a lie. That same, boundless love had been echoed in other eyes, countless other times. And she had been as happy then as now.

***

Eventually Miriam told him. About Lollia, and the others, though she never said how many there had been. John didn’t need to know. This time it would be different. This would truly be for all time, and so she hadn’t lied. Not to him. At first she tried to be sparse with the details. It wouldn’t happen to him, after all, so what was the use of frightening him? But he would not let it be and so, bit by bit, she let the horror unfold.

He was angry. He cried and the tears tore at her heart like daggers of glass. But in the end, he believed her when she repeated her promise again and again. His voice still raw from weeping, he said it back to her, as if to seal a bargain: “Forever. Forever and ever.” She nodded and waited in silence, not wanting to break this peace in case it was as fragile as it seemed. But he kissed her then, and they made love, and afterwards he fell asleep with his head against her breast.

Even humans never actually believed they would die, so why would her kind? They lived with death, from death, and still it was a stranger. Maybe that was the thing that kept them sane. If they truly were sane. At times she did not know.

***

They were in France, once again. How she loved France! The very fragrance of the air was different here than in any of the many, many places she had ever lived in. She had spent most of her time here, over the last few centuries. Some places she never returned to, where the memories of blood pooling and pooling on the floor and sand in her eyes and… No, she did not wish to ever remember those. Still, there were other countries, and cities and hidden places she liked to visit from time to time. But always she came to France, to the vineyards and ruins, and felt her heart ease for some unknown reason.

And Paris, well Paris had always been something else. She did not necessarily want to stay there too long, but to visit once in a while, oh yes. Just a taste of the beating heart of that city, what joy it could bring. Paris was never dead, and would never die.

They had rented a wonderful suite of rooms in the 3rd Arrondissement. They could lie all day in bed and see the river through the windows. She always found enjoyment in observing a body of water, how it was constantly in movement and yet never changed. John had wanted to get a place in Montparnasse, where the cafes and the artists and parties were, but she had won in the end. It was always better to live further away from where one hunted. And she loved walking back from there in the brightening light of dawn, arm in arm with him. Warm with all the beauty that she had seen, that still rang in her ears, that beat in her veins. The white stone of the buildings around them seemed to glow with the tentative rays of the returning sun and what shadows yet remained were sweet and inviting, made only for lovers to hide in.

“Will it always be like this?” John asked her, soft as a whisper. She turned to look at him, saw in his eyes both the happiness and the ever-present pain, and smiled. “Yes”, she answered, her voice firm and clear as the air, “like this and better.”

***

When she cradled his frail body in her arms, for the last time, she wished there was something to say. That there was a comforting lie that she could tell. But she had never learned any of those for this moment. Perhaps she’d refused that lesson, like she’d refused the idea that it would always come to this, again and again. Or perhaps here, at the end, she finally loved him too much.


End file.
